I love Doctor Nerdlove. He’s a brilliant advice columnist whose responses often give me a new perspective on love and relationships. He is kind and patient, but willing to call someone on their bullshit when that is required. This response to a writer who is bitter about women was especially exceptional. I’m opening with a thorough arse-kissing because for the first time in ages I disagree with something he wrote. It’s a really old post, and normally I wouldn’t highlight those because who gives a fuck that I disagree with something that someone wrote ten years ago? I want to discuss it, though, because the emotional wail of anguish that sits at the heart of why I disagree has been on my mind a lot lately. I don’t want to do that without first telling you how much I love his work, though. Tl;dr – I’m using an old Doctor Nerdlove post as the springboard for a rant, but you should know I massively respect him and if he ever finds himself in London I will buy him a pint and a pasty by way of apology. Let’s talk about compromise in relationships, and why I never want anyone to ‘settle’ for me.

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What happens when you go back to someone from your past? Is there such a thing as ‘the one that got away’? When this week’s guest blogger pitched me this post I was positively gleeful about it – she’s got a fabulously funny, chatty style and regular readers will know that I’m a sucker for a trip down memory lane. Not to mention sex with an ex. But is it possible to recapture the magic when you’re having sex with a guy you last saw a decade ago? Let’s find out…

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“I wish I could take it away,” he says. My friend who doesn’t know what to do with my sad feelings. He tells me, with sincerity: “I wish I could take some of this away for you.”

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Cast your mind back to the last time something gave you a kick of surprising new lust. You know what I mean, right? The little moments during sex when someone said something with a particular intonation and it caused you to melt from the inside. The written erotica that made just a few tweaks to the kind of phrases you think about when you masturbate, and suddenly opened the door to a whole new avenue of fantasy. Maybe you were scrolling through your favourite porn site, and you discovered a fresh way to position two subs for a beating that gave you… well… feelings. Cast your mind back to how you felt when you were last turned on by something that surprised you. Now hold that thought, and treasure it: it may be much rarer in the future.

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The most sensible strategy, if you want to win someone back, is probably a combination of loving words and powerful actions: promise change, show how you’re working on that, tell me you love me, and remind me of all the things that I can’t help but love about you. That’s a pretty good strategy, right there, if you’re wedded to the idea of having one. There are two others, though, and enough time’s passed on each that I reckon it’s OK for me to tell the following stories. The first one is romantic, the second is horny as fuck.

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